Heretofore, there has been known an in-vehicle image display system configured to take images around a vehicle, and display the taken images on a monitor installed in the vehicle, thereby supporting driving of a driver. For example, when the driver is trying to park the vehicle, this system is operable to take an image of an area around the vehicle which is a blind spot of the driver, and display the taken image on the monitor, thereby supporting the driver to check safety of the surroundings of the vehicle. For this purpose, the system employs a camera which is equipped with a wide-angle lens (a fisheye lens or the like), and capable of taking an image in a wider range.
An image taken by the wide-angle lens-equipped camera is formed such that it is gradually compressed (shrunk) in a direction getting away from an optical axis of the lens, resulting in the occurrence of “distortion”. This “distortion” leads to difficulty in visual checking of a peripheral region of the image. As means to solve this problem, there has been known an in-vehicle image display system configured to subject an image taken by a wide-angle lens-equipped camera to coordinate conversion, to enable the taken image to be displayed on a monitor in the form of a planar image free of “distortion” (e.g., the following Patent Document 1 or 2).